Lumber was the fuel that drove the expansion of the nation. In the early days, logging was a critical part of the formula that allowed the country to grow at such an astonishing rate. Miles of untouched forests meant untethered possibilities for everyone from pioneers to city builders. Getting back to our history lesson, the drive westward was in part fueled by the Homestead Act, which encouraged people to move westward by offering them 160 acres of land to live on and work. This land often required clear cutting, the product of which could be sold on the market. As people moved west, the untapped resources of the Pacific Northwest launched logging into a whole new world. Like lumber in days past, hardwood is still fueling the expansion into the less accessible, less traveled areas today. Hardwood mats are known for their ability to help large machinery reach deeper into previously unreachable or difficult to access places, often in the pursuit of black gold (during the timber boom of the 19th century, timber was often referred to as green gold, now oil is commonly referred to as black gold (as if you needed us to tell you that)).

Hardwood mats can be called crane mats, bridge mats, rig mats, laminated mats, and log roads and they help make the inaccessible accessible. There is a lot that can be said about their ability to help heavy machinery reach deep into difficult to reach areas, and there is a lot that can be said about the invaluable tool that they are to so many, but we think the mats speak for themselves. Their popularity and the demand for quality mats is proof positive that they are a vital part of many industries across the United States and throughout the world.

If you’ve ever wondered about the history of logging, then look no further. Hardwood mats are what we are all about, and hardwood mats require lots of hardwood to build. So where does one get all this hardwood? Well, one logs it. There are not a lot of alternate routes to getting large amounts of raw timber other than logging it. Since we want you to be the most informed and astute readers around, we are going to dish out the goods when it comes to logging and its history. Now lets get started.

Logging is a complicated industry with vast influences and many key players. Its roots go deep (tree pun intended) (simple rule of thumb – any puns you may come across here, either identified or discrete, are most likely intentional to the nth degree). Some date the origins of logging in the United States as far back as the 1600’s. When people first arrived on the shore of America coming from the old world, there was an immediate need for building supplies. Back in those days, building supplies pretty much meant one thing, lumber. From the get go, lumber was a crucial and staple part of the nation’s economic profile. As the age of machines dawned and the industrial revolution began to unfold across the developed, or developing world, the need for lumber skyrocketed. There was suddenly an unquenchable demand for lumber to help build out the burgeoning nation, both on land and at sea. Shipbuilding was a large consumer of lumber in the early days of logging, as was home building and construction. As the country grew a little around the edges, and pioneers expanded the nation’s territory westward, the demand for timber continued to climb. New resources and new logging sources were hot ticket items. If you’re getting antsy to hear about hardwood mats, be patient, this is all an important part of the overall crane mat, bridge mat and rig mat world. Next time we’ll go a little further and see what we can uncover.

Last month, as well as last week, we explored what it is that makes hardwood mats and crane mats such efficient and incredible ground stabilizers. As we’ve covered previously, cranes and other heavy machinery found on the jobsite and pipeline construction site are massive and require extremely steady footing to ensure safety. Obviously in the real world, these conditions are ideal, and not likely to be found. Cranes and machinery have come a long way and vehicle design and tire quality all help make these machines more stabile and more safe, but the ground upon which they sit has the final say in issues of stability and safety. By employing the simple concept of weight dispersion, hardwood mats, crane mats, rig mats, and bridge matting can turn instability into stability.

As we know, most construction vehicles are equipped with four or more tires. The more surface area, the more stable the vehicle. Even still, a lot of this machinery can have a difficult time traversing muddy or swamp like areas due largely to the fact that the entire weight of the vehicle can only be distributed so far. The concept behind bridge matting and crane matting is a lot like the idea behind planes and boats. If a boat only had a knifelike hull to plane the water, it would cut right through it and sink very quickly. To avoid this, boats are designed with a larger surface area that displaces weight and allows the boat to glide over the top of the water. This same concept of weight dispersal is what makes crane mats work so well. Without basic physics principals working their magic behind the scenes, we’d live in an impossible world where even the thought of walking could be more complicated than we care to get into here.

Over the last several years, we’ve been digging away at the question of what makes a hardwood mat a hardwood mat. It is what makes us tick, but what makes hardwood mats tick? What is the essence of the diverse array of mats that make up the hardwood mat family. What driving features and core principals are at behind the hardwood mats and crane mats that we all know and love. The answers might surprise you, or they might just seem obvious, but either way, we’re going to dig, and dig deep to uncover the untold stories, the seldom seen truths, and rarely held glimpses of crane mats and their sibling mats. In our pursuit to leave no rock or stone unturned or untouched, we will keep a turnin’ each and every stone one by one. Just like the hardwood mats, crane mats, and rig mats that we are so diligently seeking to understand and share, we plan on venturing into some of the most inhospitable, hard to access territory there is in our pursuit of hardwood mat knowledge.

So, without further ado, let’s get down to the brass tacks.  A while ago, back when the dinosaurs still roamed the earth and hardwood mats were just a glint in their parent’s eyes, we took a preliminary look at the way a crane mat or hardwood mat worked. We looked at the science behind the mats in hopes of sharing some of what we think makes hardwood mats so irresistibly valuable.  We pursued the workings behind their ability to allow massive machinery and vehicles to safely access such difficult to reach environments over difficult and seemingly impassable ground. What we uncovered and shared here in our ever-growing dissertation on swamp mats and hardwood mats was the core idea behind the function of these tools. The dispersion of the load over the broad area of the mat is essentially the key to explaining how hardwood mats function as they do and how it is that crane mats are able to bear such incredible loads and enable such difficult terrain to be easily conquered.

Last week we started to explore some of the details associated with crane operation, and how those details are dramatically impacted by, and often dependent on the ground beneath our feet. We started to look at the importance of knowing the ground bearing capacities of crane standing areas and having a solid grasp of all crane outrigger loadings. For crane operators and construction site overseers, decisions as to the kind and size of crane mat are vital to the safety of any operation. Considerations such as weather also play an important part in assessing the safety of an operation. A water-logged area can quickly become a hazardous work site. Hardwood mats and crane mats are a quick and solid solution to the problem. By placing hardwood mats in the load bearing zones, ground stability can quickly be bolstered. We are going to outline a few more crane stabilization methods and procedures to help illustrate the importance of ground stability and hardwood mats.

First and foremost, it is critical that the area where the crane will be operating has been inspected to ensure that it is level and that the earth has been compacted to support the eventual weight of the crane and its load. Underground utilities and other constructed things that lie under foot could potentially collapse under the weight of a crane, causing failure of the crane and the risk of serious injury and loss. These are important details that every operator must double check prior to any work being done with a crane. Arranging to avoid any such underground features is a number one priority for anyone in the field. In these situations, where the ground is either not sufficiently stable to bear the load, or the load must be dispersed over a larger area for any reason, crane mats and hardwood mats are the first line of remediation. In the next installment we’ll look a little more closely at some more of these issues and see how hardwood mats are used to help make the operation or job a success.

Hardwood mats are a fundamental part in the construction of new oil and gas pipeline, as well as in the maintenance of existing pipeline. The stability and ground cover afforded by the simple contraption allows for a level of efficiency, safety and site protection that would otherwise be impossible to find. We have spent that last several months talking almost exclusively about the role of hardwood mats in these situations. There has been a lot of activity on the oil and gas pipeline front, so it seemed only fitting to talk about some of the issues surrounding hardwood mats and bridge mats in relation to the pipeline construction industry. There is certainly no shortage of demand for oil these days, hence the booming oil pipeline construction industry. Although we could sit around all day talking about hardwood mats and pipeline construction, we are going to give some other issues some much due attention. Today we are going to revisit a variation of hardwood mat that often gets overlooked in all the hustle and bustle. The crane mat is an unsung hero of the hardwood mat family, and it is due time that its praises be sung.

To help us understand the importance of stable footing in the world of crane mats, we are going to look at some of the rules for the road when it comes to crane operations. The use of cranes can be a risky venture, especially if the ground underneath is not stable, or could be compromised when extreme weight and pressure are brought to bear upon its back. (Pardon the lilting and flowery language, but hardwood mats just tend to bring out the poet in us). The burden of ensuring that the crane is adequately supported obviously falls on the contractor and the crane operator (we aren’t expecting any of you to go and start operating a crane when you finish reading this… unless you happen to be a crane operator), but we’d still like to dig into the detail of crane stability and hardwood mat solutions.

Last week we introduced the idea that the network of pipeline infrastructure across the nation is a steadily growing web of interconnected arteries and veins weaving across the country. Transporting crude oil to refineries and refined oil to distribution centers, the role of pipelines is a fundamental and important one in the oil and gas industries. Sure, without pipeline, crude would still be transported to the refineries; albeit in a much less efficient manner. If pipelines were not in place, the burden of transport would most likely fall on the freight transportation industry. This would mean increased rail and truck transport. Now, like we said last week, we are going to get into looking at some of the more hot topic projects on the table right now.

A few months back, we had been exploring the ins and outs of the pipeline construction process and talked a bit about the typical timelines that many of these large scale pipeline projects follow. Major pipeline construction projects can take years upon years to complete. The planning and permitting stages are some of the most time consuming aspects of the process, and can account for a huge portion of the time spent developing a new pipeline. As a lot of you are probably aware, there is one such project in the news recently that has been years in the making, and is currently finding itself stymied in its steps. The 1,700-mile Keystone XL pipeline was rejected in the Whitehouse last week, and the pipeline construction firm was encouraged to reapply for the federal permitting required to begin construction.  This trans-continental pipeline would run from a tar sand mine (a controversial form of oil procurement due to the energy intensive refinement process) in Canada to the U.S. Gulf Coast. The project, which has been in the works for several years, will continue its long journey, and before it is all said and done, hardwood mats will most assuredly be involved.

As you all are probably fully aware, we talk a lot about pipelines, pipeline construction, and everything that goes along with it. The lifeblood of our nation is pumped to and fro through a vast and complex circuitry of pipeline. Daily, the overall number of miles of pipeline in our country grows. This is certainly no surprise to most of you. Being a manufacturer and supplier of hardwood mats, as you might imagine, we have seen it all when it comes to pipeline construction projects. Hardwood mats and crane mats are one of the fundamental pieces of the picture when it comes to pipeline construction and are an imperative if there is to be any hope of traversing challenging, swampy, muddy, wet, or sensitive terrain with any kind of efficiency. The design and nature of hardwood mats in all their many varieties is such that the travel of heavy machinery over difficult terrain is drastically improved (when we say hardwood mat, we are including a whole host of hardwood mat varieties: crane mats, bridge mats, laminated mats, rig mats, swamp mats, and just about any other kind of mat you could think of).

By dispersing weight across a larger surface area, the impact of the tire or machinery tread is diffused. This means less impact on the roots of sensitive vegetation, less erosion (a problem that can plague job sites years after their completion), and a greatly reduced burden of reclamation after the project is finished. Like we pointed out before getting carried away on our tangent of hardwood mat use, the number of miles of pipelines across the country and across the globe is steadily growing daily. In the forthcoming installment of our hardwood mat o-rama blog, we are going to look at some pipeline projects that are in the works and explore some of the issues surrounding these projects.

Last week, we dove headlong into the reason hardwood mats have become commonplace on pipeline construction operations and other construction jobsites. We looked at the threat erosion poses to the ecosystems surrounding jobsites. It is important to note that the threat of degraded soil is not that animals will starve, or flowers won’t grow; the real threat is that the value gained from these resources (vegetation and animal life) will not be as abundant on the land. For landowners and recreation enthusiasts who rely on the land for food (grown or otherwise), seriously eroded or damaged soil ecosystems can mean lower productivity and less yield from the land. Hardwood mats are becoming a fundamental part of the picture on jobsites that require the preservation of the land for the purpose of productivity.

At any given moment, there are pipeline construction projects in every stage of development. Whether in the planning stages or the later stages of actual pipeline construction, hardwood mats, crane mats, laminated mats, and bridge mats are likely in the picture. To ensure that hardwood mats are in ready supply, DixieMat stocks an abundant supply of every variety of hardwood mat. Because the variety of applications for which hardwood mats are used is vast, there are a variety of shapes and sizes available to suit every need. Where a crane mat might accommodate one situation perfectly, a laminated mat or bridge mat might be exactly what is needed to safely and effectively construct pipeline, or access hard to reach environments.  By ensuring the protection of valuable environmental resources, and by enabling the safe and efficient access of remote areas and hard to access places, hardwood mats ease the burden of major construction projects and pipeline construction projects. This is the heart and soul of the why hardwood mats are so important and at the heart and soul of DixeMat hardwood mats.

When ­dealing in the hardwood mat and laminated mat industry, there are a few rules that are helpful to know.  Let’s start with the obvious; a hardwood mat is a simple thing, and its role on the jobsite is basic – but don’t let that fool you, its importance and value on the pipeline construction site is paramount. Last week we took some time to look at the reasons for hardwood mats on pipeline construction projects. One of the biggest reasons these tools (if you can call a hardwood mat a tool) are brought onto the jobsite is their unsurpassed ability to protect fragile soil ecosystems and preserve the integrity of the landscape. Erosion and soil degradation pose a serious treat to the preservation of productive ecosystems. What do we mean when we say productive? Well, a productive environment, in this sense, refers to a variety of different measures that gauge the health of the land. This can include the health of the livestock or wild game that rely on the land for food and sustenance, the health of the microbial systems that call the soil home, the vegetation that grows on the land, and even the waterways and fish in the surrounding areas. There is obviously a lot that goes into a healthy ecosystem, and it all starts with what can grow on the soil. This soil makes up the base of the entire system, and as its foundation, it is one of the most critical pieces of the puzzle. Remove the foundation, and the rest will unravel. Major erosion can impact the soil’s ability to grow vegetation on it. If the soil is too unstable to grow vegetation on it, the animal life that requires productive soil and vegetation will be forced to find new places to feed and new places to live. We’ll look at this a little more in depth next time.